How to Create a Vendor Central ASN With Carton Details

An advance shipment notification, or ASN, is the electronic packing list a vendor sends Amazon for a purchase order shipment. It lists the purchase orders on the shipment, the items and quantities, and the container codes on the cartons and pallets. When the freight arrives, the fulfillment center scans the label on each carton and receives it against what the ASN said that carton holds. If the scan and the ASN agree, receiving is fast. If they disagree, the units can be received late, short, or not at all, and the vendor may be charged back.

Amazon's shipment confirmation documentation makes the timing rule plain: Amazon must receive the ASN before the product is received at the fulfillment center, and missing or delayed confirmations result in chargebacks. Amazon's vendor manual adds the practical version of that rule for Vendor Central users: transmit the ASN after the freight is loaded with the carrier and before it reaches the building. Treat both conditions as one deadline. An ASN sent before loading risks describing cartons that change at the dock, and an ASN sent after arrival is a late ASN.

Vendors without an EDI or API connection handle all of this in the Shipments feature of Vendor Central, which Amazon describes as the manual path for creating shipment confirmations.

Start in Vendor Central under Orders, then Shipments, and create a new shipment. Add every purchase order that ships from the same warehouse to the same Amazon fulfillment center on the same truck. Amazon asks vendors to consolidate purchase orders this way, and it keeps one physical shipment tied to one shipment record, which makes receiving and dispute work much simpler. Enter the total carton count and the pallet count, using zero pallets for floor loaded freight.

Next, map items to cartons. For anything beyond a handful of boxes, the spreadsheet option is the practical choice: download the template Vendor Central provides at the carton mapping step, fill it in, and upload it. Use Amazon's template exactly as downloaded. Column names, order, and required fields are defined by Amazon and can change, so a homemade layout is the most common reason an upload fails.

Fill the sheet with one row per carton per ASIN. A carton holding a single ASIN gets one row. A mixed carton gets one row for each ASIN inside it, all sharing the same carton number. The quantities for each ASIN, added up across all rows, must equal what is physically packed and what was confirmed on the purchase order. The simplest control is to pack the boxes, label them, and fill the sheet from one pick list, so the sheet records what happened instead of what was planned. If the upload reports errors, fix them in the same file and upload again.

What happens next depends on the freight terms on the purchase order. Collect vendors, where Amazon arranges and pays for freight, add the shipment details such as freight ready date, weight, and volume, then submit a routing request. Amazon's manual asks for the request at least two business days before the purchase order ship window ends, because the earliest pickup Amazon offers is two business days out. A late request is the usual cause of an on time accuracy chargeback. After submission, only the pickup date can be changed, and only until 5 PM local time on the day before pickup.

Amazon then assigns the carrier and issues an Amazon reference number, the ARN, with routing instructions. Release the freight only to the assigned carrier, and have it ready when the carrier arrives, since freight that is not ready can lead to a pickup accuracy chargeback. The ARN also belongs on pallet labels for Collect shipments.

Prepaid vendors, who arrange their own freight, create the ASN directly instead of a routing request. Their carrier must hold its own approved Carrier Central account, which the vendor cannot request on the carrier's behalf, and must book a delivery appointment at least 24 hours ahead and inside the purchase order delivery window. The vendor gives the carrier the purchase order numbers, the PRO number, and the bill of lading number, and the ASN must carry a valid PRO from that same carrier. For both freight terms, a printed bill of lading is required for full truckload and less than truckload freight, and it should not be handwritten.

Every carton needs a scannable logistic barcode that ties it to the ASN. The options are the Amazon container code, called AMZNCC, which Vendor Central prints at no cost; the serial shipping container code, or SSCC, issued from your own GS1 company prefix; a 2D barcode packing slip; or a GTIN-14. GTIN-14 is accepted only inside palletized freight and requires Amazon's Gold List registration first. Floor loaded and small parcel cartons need an SSCC, AMZNCC, or 2D barcode packing slip. Mixed cartons also need the ship from and ship to addresses and the purchase order as text and barcode.

Two limits matter when choosing a label type. An AMZNCC shipment can carry at most 2,500 cartons, and AMZNCC labels cannot be used with ASNs sent by EDI or API, so vendors who automate later will move to SSCC. Amazon's shipment confirmation documentation also expects container level detail, such as the purchase order, to be sent for each specific pallet or carton rather than only at the shipment level.

Since July 1, 2024, every pallet shipped to a North American Amazon building needs a license plate barcode, either SSCC or AMZNCC, plus ship from and ship to addresses and the purchase order as text and barcode. Single ASIN pallets show a product identifier, and mixed pallets show a Mixed SKU placard. Place two to four pallet labels on adjacent sides, outside the stretch wrap. When available, add the bill of lading, PRO, pallet number such as pallet 1 of 12, carton count, and the ARN for Collect freight.

Once the freight is loaded, confirm the ASN is submitted so it reaches Amazon before the shipment arrives. Track the shipment in Vendor Central under Orders, then Shipments, by opening the shipment and viewing its events and tracking. Amazon's documentation notes it can take up to 30 minutes for a submitted or replaced confirmation to show, and that a Contact Us case is the route when Vendor Central shows the wrong values.

Most receiving chargebacks trace back to a short list of failures. No carton content label applies when a carton has no label or carries a label that is not on any ASN. Carton content accuracy applies when what is inside a box does not match its ASN rows. ASN visibility covers missing or late ASNs and wrong PRO, bill of lading, or ARN data. On time accuracy and pickup accuracy cover late routing requests and freight that is not ready at pickup. Amazon publishes the chargeback names in the vendor manual, while the rates appear in each vendor account under operational performance, so check your account rather than relying on figures quoted elsewhere.

Vendors shipping steady volume should consider moving the ASN to EDI 856 or the Vendor Shipments API, which Amazon lists as the automated path for submitting and updating shipment confirmations. EDI setup lives under Integration in Vendor Central and includes testing with Amazon, and those ASNs use SSCC labels with the pallet at the tare level.